Thomas Norman DeWolf was born and raised in Pomona, California. Tom began writing Inheriting the Trade in 2001, during the summer in which he joined Katrina Browne and eight distant cousins on their life-altering journey to Rhode Island, Ghana, and Cuba, to make the film Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. He has been writing full time since 2005. Tom and his wife, Lindi, live in Oregon. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.
Her eyes flit from face to face and her smile gives way to a tiny laugh. Today is July 1, 2001. Nine of us, four men and five women, sit in a circle of chairs on the back porch of a white clapboard house near Bristol, Rhode Island. The house is surrounded by trees and bushes so thick I can't tell how close the nearest neighbors live. I feel detached from the rest of the world. The only sounds intruding upon the silence are those we make, and those of the birds. I can smell the ocean from here.
These people are my distant cousins. I met most of them for the first time earlier this morning at church and have met Katrina once before. She looks cool in her short hair and sleeveless blouse despite the summer heat. A trickle of sweat slithers down inside my long-sleeved shirt, tickling my right side. I discreetly brush my bicep against my ribcage to stem the current and then wipe droplets from my forehead with my fingers.
Katrina's calm vanishes as she begins to speak about why we are here: how she learned from her grandmother about her slave-trading ancestors, and decided to make a documentary film that will expose the horror of our family's past. I don't know if it's the subject matter, the camera, speaking in front of us, or simply the culmination of more than three years of work and anticipation on her part, but Katrina now appears fragile and troubled. She speaks in a hushed voice for many minutes, pausing, stopping, looking down at her fidgeting hands, then up at some of us.
Finally,she sits in silence. A voice interrupts from the side. "Can you do it again?" Jude Ray, the film's co-director, says she needs to be more concise and make her voice stronger.
Liz Dory, the director of photography, shoulders the professional-grade video camera focused in close-up on Katrina's face. Jeff Livesey, the sound man, holds the boom microphone above her head. We have Liz to thank for our seating in direct sunlight. A large umbrella was removed because the shadows fouled up her shots. It's supposed to get up to about ninety today, but it feels much hotter. Jude, Liz, and Jeff stand with the confident air of people who've been on many film sets.
"Umm, I..." Tears well up in Katrina's eyes. The corners of her mouth begin to turn up in a smile, but drop as she looks down again. The glowing red light on the camera indicates that Liz continues to record.
One of the men in the group rises, spreads his arms, and smiles. "How about a group hug?" This is Dain Perry. Dressed in khaki shorts, a light shirt, and broad-brimmed straw hat to shade his head, he appears to be in his mid-fifties. I exhale the breath I've been hold-ing, glad that Dain has broken the tension. Dark patches of sweat dot his shirt as well. We all stand and embrace, resting our arms around each others' shoulders or waists for several silent moments. Though Dain's gesture seems intended to support Katrina, this feels like the first time we've all actually connected.
When we sit back down, the tears fall from Katrina's eyes. She explains that when she was in her late twenties she read a booklet about her family history written by her grandmother. She hesitates and looks down again. "It's hard and scary to know that one is connected to evil people. There was so much family pride."
Now she felt far from proud. She could not say out loud to anyone that she was descended from slave traders. "And, um..." She looks again from face to face. She wipes her tears, takes a deep breath, and smiles. Her voice becomes stronger.
She explains that the intense part was not just the shock of discovering her slave-trading ancestry, but the realization that on some level she knew already but had buried it. "I prided myself on being self-aware and self-reflective in thinking about issues of race and society and yet I had managed to completely repress the fact that I was descended from slave traders."
Her voice becomes more animated as she explains that in read-ing the booklet, "I just knew instantly that I already knew. But I have no idea when I first found out, how I found out, who told me, how I reacted, and yet this is a pretty big deal. So I started asking questions about our family and about this buried history of New England." She explains that she started out on a solo journey but realized it needed to be a family process. She is honored that we've chosen to join her.
"A lot of people who aren't here are totally supportive," says Elly, another cousin who flew from the west coast to be here. Elly works for the Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle, moni-toring Superfund Sites. Like me, she's never met any of these peo-ple before. Her long, dark hair is held back in a ponytail.
Elly's right. Many family members Katrina contacted, as well as friends and colleagues, of hers and ours, applaud her efforts. There are also people who oppose the project. Some live in Bristol, and in-deed, some are family members.
The oldest of the women present—about sixty, not quite twice Katrina's age—introduces herself with careful and deliberate words.
I sense a burden even heavier than the one Katrina bears. With no hint of a smile, she looks off into the distance and then down at the deck as she begins to speak. "Well, my name today is Keila DePoorter. I say 'today' because when I was young I was christened Edith Howe Fulton. I'm Holly's oldest sister." She smiles at the woman sitting next to her. "She's the youngest in the family and I'm the oldest. Changing my name, which I did back in 1975, was part of my effort to move away from family. I was named after my grandmother Edith Howe, and I adored her. But carrying that name felt like this heavy thing for me when I was young. It had a lot of nonverbal expectation."
Like Katrina, Keila continues to shift her gaze back and forth from the patio deck to us as she speaks. "I grew up here in Bristol. My grandparents had a dairy farm across the street from where we lived and I don't ever remember not just being in love with animals. I lived from one summer to the next. We lived in Providence in the wintertime, which I suffered through to go back to Bristol, to go back to the farm. That's where my heart was, on the land, with the animals.
"When I was ten years old I would get up at four-thirty in the morning to help with morning milking. I loved working with the farmers. They felt so real to me. They weren't playing this strange game that my family played that I just could not identify with." Elizabeth, the youngest of the women, nods and smiles."There were times when I used to think,'I wish I was an animal, I don't like being a human being. I don't like seeing what grown-ups do.'"
I sit to Keila's right with crossed legs, my hands folded in my lap.
"My life has felt like a struggle because I love my family so much." She says she's always felt "pushed-pulled," a phrase I've never heard before but know exactly what she means. Looking down, Keila tilts her head and a smile begins to form as she tells us that one of the unwritten rules in her family was something called the No Talk Rule.
Holly lifts her hands from her knees and with an exaggerated expression mouths the words, "It's big..."
Keila chuckles and nods her head in agreement with her sister. "It's very big. You don't talk about unpleasant things. There's a line in one of our family books that one of our ancestors said, that we should never talk about sex. What were the others?" She looks to Holly.
"Religion."
"Religion," Keila repeats.
"I think politics," says Holly.
"Right," says Keila. "And the last one was 'and the Negroes.'"
I look from face to face as people nod and chuckle uncomfortably. What am I doing here? Though I am distantly related, I'm the only one here who isn't descended from slave traders, not directly anyway. I feel another trickle of sweat, on my left side this time.
This place is foreign to me. I live in Bend, Oregon, about as far from Bristol as you can get, and not just geographically. How have I ended up with this group of virtual strangers, speaking about such un-pleasant things?
Twenty years ago, David Howe, a friend of mine, told me he sus-pected we might be related because his father's middle name is DeWolf. He was right. My wife, Lindi, and I first met David's father in 1986. Halsey DeWolf Howe and his wife, Carol, invited us to spend the night with them on our way through Massachusetts on our honeymoon. After dinner, Halsey explained my connection to David.
"Your father and David are sixth cousins, as you can see here." He pointed to a name at the top of the genealogy chart he'd created to delineate my relationship to David. "Charles DeWolf is the com-mon ancestor. He was born in 1695 and probably died in Guadeloupe in the West Indies. Our line descends from one of his sons, Mark Antony DeWolf. You descend from his older brother, Simon."
Halsey grew up in Bristol, as have generations of Mark Antony DeWolf's descendants. They used to gather at one of the old DeWolf mansions, Linden Place, for a family reunion each year to watch the Fourth of July parade. Halsey regaled me all evening with stories of a time and place long past, filled with eccentric characters. He began with James DeWolf, the man most responsible for the family's fame and fortune.
"Captain Jim was a true scoundrel in every sense of the word. He was a slave trader, rum runner, and privateer." Visions of the Disneyland ride Pirates of the Caribbean entered my mind. James DeWolf became a United States senator and amassed a fortune from his adventurous exploits.
Linden Place was built by James's nephew George DeWolf. George's daughter,Theodora,married Christopher Colt,the brother of Samuel Colt, who invented the revolver. There were once several mansions in Bristol owned by the family, but only Linden Place re-mains standing today.
Mark Antony's grandson "Nor'west" John DeWolf sailed from Bristol around South America and north along the coast of the Oregon Territory in 1805 to Vancouver Island and Alaska on a fur-trading mission. He sold his ship and traversed the fifty-five hundred miles overland across Siberia from east to west. He then sailed back home to Bristol.1 He wed Mary Melville and became uncle to young Herman, whose imagination was stirred by the seafaring tales of his uncle "Nor'west" John. Melville had his own adventures at sea before eventually writing Moby Dick, where "Captain D'Wolf" appears in chapter 45. (D'Wolf was an alternate spelling of DeWolf.)
William DeWolf Hopper, who played Paul Drake on the Perry Mason television series, boasted ties to Bristol through his father and grandmother. (William's mother was the notorious gossip col-umnist Hedda Hopper.) Theodora and Christopher Colt's grandson furnished the other notable theatrical connection when he married the famous actress Ethel Barrymore, who once lived at Linden Place.
Listening to Halsey, I felt like a child sitting enthralled at the feet of a master storyteller.Throughout that night, and for months after, I focused not on the more unsavory acts of my newly discovered rel-atives, but on the fact that I was related to Hoppers, Colts, Barrymores, and Melvilles.I became obsessed with genealogy and making connections with distant cousins, dead or alive, famous or not.
In December 2000, David received a letter from Katrina, who is the daughter of his cousin Libby, and shared it with me.
DeWolf descendants meeting with Ghanaians, African-Americans, and others at the Town Hall, Cape Coast, Ghana. Courtesy of Katrina Browne
We enter a large auditorium with a stage at the far end. In places, its curtains have separated from the track above. Dozens of white plastic patio chairs are gathered in the middle of the open wooden floor. Far above, several ceiling tiles are missing. Others are cracked or discolored by leaking water.
Wide slatted doors to the outside are set into the sides of the auditorium. They remain open so air will circulate on this, another hot, humid African day. I walk outside and watch three small boys jostle and play together.
When I go back inside, Ledlie sits in the middle of a small circle of chairs that are filled with young girls in peach-and-brown uniforms from nearby St. Monica's School. They look to be twelve or thirteen years old. I stand a short distance away and listen as he speaks with them about slavery, rape, malnutrition, and the Middle Passage. One girl asks if Ledlie's ancestors bought her ancestors for a lot of money.
"No," he says.
"They lied to us," she says. "The white people said they are com-ing to make friends with us and trade with us. Instead they came and made us slaves."
"Are you not ashamed of coming here?" another girl asks. The other girls giggle. They look surprised by their classmate's boldness.
"Yeah, I am ashamed. It is a shaming thing."
As more of our guests arrive, Ledlie's intimate conversation breaks up. We soon sit among the students from St. Monica's and more than two dozen adults of various ages from Ghana and the United States. We begin by introducing ourselves to each other.
Then Kofi stands. "Good evening to you all. My name is Kofi Peprah and I'm the co-facilitator for this program. We are all gathered here this evening to create history. We have a family from the United States whose ancestors were directly involved in the slave trade and it has created a lot of tension in their heads."
Katrina explains the background of the project and Juanita then asks for a moment of silence to honor the ancestors who were taken from this continent, to honor the people who were taken on ships and did not survive the Middle Passage, to honor the people who made it alive to the New World. Their legacy is why we're here. "When we talk about slavery and spiritual decimation, we often talk about black folks. But something has happened to white folks in this whole process. This family is trying to figure out what that is and they want your help and your wisdom. You don't have to be nice. The last thing this family wants is for people to say things in a way that's overly polite and is not getting at the real stuff."
Abiko says, "If you are trying to ease racial tensions, why are you having this conversation in Ghana when the problem is really in America?"
An African American woman, Dr. Jessie Ruth Gaston, professor of African history at California State University, Sacramento, wears a bright fuchsia-colored wrap around her head and a light blue blouse. "Why Ghana? I say, why not Ghana? The participants in the slave trade are diverse. It's not just an issue with the U.S.; it's an African issue as well. Not all Africans participated. But some of the rulers did benefit from the trade. When I teach African history, it's a hard area to discuss. It's complex. Many times, when students learn Africa participated, they just throw the responsibility off."
She talks about the treatment African Americans continue to be subjected to: one group of people has been taught that they are "less than" while another has been taught they are "greater than." Everywhere in the world where there are black and white people, or lighter-skinned blacks and darker-skinned blacks, the images remain. The negative images connected to people of African descent impact them when they seek employment. The assumption is that they aren't qualified. People question whether she earned her job or if it was handed to her through affirmative action. People of color can have college degrees, she says, but "When people see me, they see black."
"That gets at the crux of the issue," says Juanita. "There are things that white folks don't understand that intensely affect present-day living for black people. How has this whole legacy impacted white people? What has it done to the ways in which they set up their families, their communities, the ways they move through the world, and the ways in which they deal with nonwhite people?"
We listen to example after example of incidents in which people of African descent are regularly suspected, followed, or looked down upon. We hear how young African American girls play with white dolls and how young black women want to straighten their hair to look whiter.
"When I was in college I read Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye,"says Katrina. "I had blonder hair than I do now and I cut my hair as short as I could because I was so upset that I had the kind of hair and blue eyes that were making young black girls aspire to look like me. It was such a quintessential white guilt thing. Until I started dealing directly with my family history, and working through my feelings, the guilt was all-consuming. When you hate yourself, you're not an effective ally in solving problems."
She says that one legacy of slavery for white people is that we don't notice racial inequality because it's too painful."When you do notice, it's so upsetting that all you can do is hate yourself. A lot of people get stuck in one of those two places. What I'm trying to fig-ure out is if there's some other place where I can absorb the horror, yet be in a better relationship with myself and others in solving the problems."
Kofi walks farther down this path."Do you think the slave trade made the whites feel superior? Do you whites feel superior while you are sitting with us?"
"Whites of European descent have felt superior from the very beginning," says Dain, who sits next to Kofi. "In every new country we went to, people of a different color we considered barbarians and savages."
Kofi leans forward, looks directly at Dain, and digs in. "Do you still personally feel superior as a white person?"
"That's a wonderful question for me," says Dain as he taps his own chest and smiles. "I can say uncategorically no, I do not. I feel that everyone in this room is my peer at least, and some of you are probably my superior in many ways." He tells about growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, a terribly racist community, in the forties and fifties.
"I was terribly racist. I remember walking behind black people and yelling out the word 'chocolate.' I remember throwing pecans at the flower ladies across the street from us, all of whom were black, simply to harass them. That embarrasses me very, very deeply. Was it the environment that I was in? Absolutely. Was it more than that? I don't know, and that thought scares me. I may be afraid to dig for that answer.
"I feel very proud, frankly, that I have been able to overcome as much of that as I have. But it's taken a great deal of looking inside, and it's taken an enormous amount of risk to reach out and put my arms around those black people who I know. It has at times been very scary, because we've been taught to be scared of black people."
"So Dain," says Juanita, her head tilted slightly. "I'm curious. Do you really, really think that you've shed every single bit of the racial categorization and the racism? Do you really think it's possi-ble that's where you are? Because I know a lot of black folks who would think that wasn't true." It's obvious that Juanita doesn't think it's true.
"And I would think that wasn't true also." He laughs. All of a sudden he's in the hot seat and his bald head turns red."I'm not sure I said it was completely gone."
"You said overcome, and so to me..."
"Largely overcome," he interrupts. "Let me narrow that down." I feel a little sorry for Dain as he grapples for his next words. "My deep concern is that racism is a part of the human condition. Peo-ple want to feel superior to other people. I don't think it can all ever be shed. What I can do is move how I interact with people beyond where I used to be, and embrace them. That is the best I can do."
Juanita calls on a Jamaican woman, Dr. Kaylene Richards-Ekeh, a professor of criminal justice who, like Jessie Gaston, teaches at California State University, Sacramento. She wants to address how the legacy of slavery impacts criminal law in the United States. She explains the disproportionate percentages of incarceration of people of color—that when black people violate the law, they're treated differently than Caucasians who commit the same crime. For the same offense, black people are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be prosecuted, more likely to be convicted and sentenced to longer terms in prison."That is one of the legacies of slavery.When people violate the law I'm not saying they should not be prosecuted, but black people are less likely to be able to obtain a good lawyer, and justice in the United States depends on the lawyer you can afford."
She discusses images in our society that perpetuate certain myths, such as that black people are criminals and drug addicts.And even though most people on welfare in the United States are white women and their children, the prevalent notion is that it is black people on welfare.
Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi teaches video production at Berkeley High School. He came to Ghana for the first time to study and to trace his roots. Eli tells about his Puerto Rican and Jewish heritage. He's traveled to Israel, Puerto Rico — where his African ancestors are from— and elsewhere in the Caribbean. He says, "If you look at the whole world today, you have to ask yourself why blacks and Africans are at the bottom everywhere. In Africa, in the Caribbean, in South America and North America, the darker skin you have, the lower you are in society. That's the effect of slavery.
"For the family that came here today, and for we of privilege in the United States, whether white folks or folks of color, do you really want equality and justice? We're here today on top. If we weren't on top, we wouldn't be able to be in Ghana. Are you really willing to give up what you have to be equal? I figure the answer is no." His voice becomes more animated. "You can talk about Nelson Mandela, and what he did was great. But the situation in South Africa is the same.The same people have the money. It's easy to play around with, but when we're talking about action and being real with ourselves, where are we willing to go with this?"
Ledlie sits across the room from Eli. "I'm a retired priest of the Episcopal church. My brother here asks the right question, and it's very disturbing. I think of the parable of the young wealthy man who went to Jesus and asked what he could do and Jesus said, 'You can give up your wealth.' And he turned away sorrowful." Ledlie says he's scared of that image; that he would be that man.
"When I began this journey," says Elly," I thought I needed to return transformed into a disciple of a new vision or that I would need to be done. And I'm not going to be done. This conversation has to happen every day, every hour, with whites among whites, with blacks among blacks, between blacks and whites—every combination. We need to keep talking."
"I've been a primary teacher for thirty years." I turn my at-tention to an African American woman with a powerful voice and presence. Josephine Watts sits next to Jessie Gaston and sounds like someone who could keep the attention of a primary school classroom. She works with teachers who teach English as a second language. She says, "You asked what you can do. Take a closer look and try not to deny that racism exists, that injustice exists. You can do something about it. Minorities cry about it, and nothing is done. But if the dominant culture accepts it, then something can be done."
Josephine says that at schools we need to ask the educators to accept blacks and whites on an equal level. Many black children have felt the stigma of a white teacher believing they cannot learn, that they have nothing to offer."I sat in a class observing a white teacher. She only had two black kids in her class, and she was asking questions. A little black boy had his hands all up." She waves her arm like a young child. "She kept telling him to sit down. This is in Sacramento. These things are happening to our black children.They grow up to be adults and here we are."
"Can you help me?" I ask Josephine. She nods and smiles. "If I as a white person stand up and talk, whether I talk about Dr. Martin Luther King or about Nelson Mandela, I have the impression that people think I'm just trying to be politically correct. I don't know how not to sound that way. Are there words or images that I could bring to this dialogue so black people don't think I'm full of crap; so that black people can see that I'm trying to be a sincere person who wants to do better?"
Josephine's eyes bore into mine from fifteen feet away. She says February is the only time we talk about black people. Throughout school curriculums the focus is on European culture, and subjects like Shakespeare, with which black students have little or no connection. When teaching math, why not include the contributions the Egyptians made? When education is broadened to include contributions by Africans and African Americans, blacks can start feeling good about themselves and then they'll know we're sincere.
"But if you just dwell on one thing, well, everybody knows about Martin Luther King."
I respond that I don't work in a school, and ask how to apply it in daily life.
"Daily life, okay. I was a teacher; only black teacher in my school. It took years for the white teachers to even invite me to any func-tions they had. Then, if we were going to a movie, they didn't ask me if I was interested in the movie we were attending, and it was the most boring movie I ever went to." Her comment elicits laughter. "Reach out to any minority person you're working with and invite them into your home, into your circle. That's a step. And once you invite them, don't think it's a token. Ask what they want to do this weekend. Just sit in our shoes. Make it a point to go to a black play or a black concert, so you can see how it feels. That's a step."
"See,that's hard."I'm not sure why I said these words.They just came out. I look at Josephine and shake my head.
"That is hard." Josephine leans forward as she slings her words at me. Most of the group laughs and claps, but I don't look at them. I focus on Josephine, who also doesn't laugh. "Hey, I have to do it every day. I'm almost the only black teacher in my district. When I go to a conference, I'm the only black person sitting in that conference. Is it easy? No. But I have to do it. You have to do it. You have to do it in order to feel what I'm feeling."
"Thank you," I say. I continue to stare at her for several moments.
Dr. Gaston says, "What the family has hooked onto is the truth. Once a group of people get hold of the truth, they don't just sit still on it. In African history or black studies, everybody used to say, 'What is there to teach anyway?' I have one African history class, to cover from ancient times to present. Now, what can you do with that? How can you teach the history of a continent four times the size of the United States all in one term?
"Once the truth starts coming out it will cause this kind of con-fusion amongst members of the dominant society, which sets off a chain. So I think it's a good beginning. And what Eli was saying too, 'But what now?' " She asks if we're willing to talk about reparations and other types of programs. Becoming conscious of racial injustice and the legacy of slavery is only the beginning. "What then?" she asks.
That is the key question, I think to myself. What next? The truth is confusing. Actually, that's not accurate —it isn't the truth that's confusing. It's what to do with the truth that upsets the ordered world I've been raised in and taught to believe in. That's confusing, and very challenging.
"I want to comment on walking in people's shoes," says Eli. "I never believed that would work. You'll never get the experience the other person has." He looks toward Josephine, "You said, 'I have to do it every day.' They don't have to do it every day. So they'll never understand what you're talking about — ever. So don't even think that you can. It's not comparable. The direction you're going is great, but if you're not going to devote your life to it, they'll never take you seriously. You can talk about Martin Luther King, or whatever, but they'll know after you leave the podium you're not real because you haven't devoted your life to it. It's not something you can turn on and off. It has to be a path, a walk of life."
Eli's comments ring true. It is my privilege that allows me to be here. Before this journey I never considered my own privilege. Of course I've known I'm better off than many people, but it has always been generic. It was "we Americans" or we "middle class" who had it better than "those poor people" over there. It was never me.
Listening today, I realize even more that I've been trained, invisibly and unconsciously, not to see my own privilege as a man or as a white person. I look down at the little notebook in which I write. Even this twenty-five-cent pad of paper is evidence of my privilege.
I have every confidence that all these notes I'm taking, and cassette tapes I'm recording, will one day become a published book.
I look around the auditorium and marvel at this moment here in Cape Coast, Ghana. I'm part of an amazing conversation with several Ghanaian people, but mostly with African Americans. Why don't we talk together like this at home? Why did it take all of us coming to Africa? How can we whites understand what African American people experience, and how can they understand us, if we don't talk with each other?
Introduction
From Chapter 1: Growing Up White
When we sit back down, the tears fall from Katrina's eyes. She explains that when she was in her late twenties she read a booklet about her family history written by her grandmother. She hesitates and looks down again. "It's hard and scary to know that one is connected to evil people. There was so much family pride."
Now she felt far from proud. She could not say out loud to anyone that she was descended from slave traders. "And, um..." She looks again from face to face. She wipes her tears, takes a deep breath, and smiles. Her voice becomes stronger. Read more »
From Chapter 4: The Great Folks
I struggle to explain that I did not know how to talk to black people about my fear when I was young. There was no basis or education for that kind of dialogue. I also didn't know about any of the family history, let alone about slavery in the North. There's no amnesia, there's no guilt--for me, it didn't exist. Katrina asks what I would think if I were my ancestor Simon. Even though I'm not guilty, how I would deal with the fact that my brother was a slave trader?
I pause for a moment. "It was almost two hundred years ago. It was a different time, it was a different culture. I don't want to defend anything that happened in this family or in New England or in America but I don't want to vilify these people either because I don't know. I wasn't walking in their shoes." Read more »
From Chapter 9: "I Have to Do It Every Day"
It is my privilege that allows me to be here. Before this journey I never considered my own privilege. Of course I've known I'm better off than many people, but it has always been generic. It was "we Americans" or we "middle class" who had it better than "those poor people" over there. It was never me.
Listening today, I realize even more that I've been trained, invisibly and unconsciously, not to see my own privilege as a man or as a white person. I look down at the little notebook in which I write. Even this twenty-five-cent pad of paper is evidence of my privilege. Read more »
Excerpted with permission from Inheriting the Trade by Thomas Norman DeWolf. Beacon Press, Boston, © 2008.
Growing Up White
From Chapter 1: Growing Up White
"Here we are," says Katrina Browne, leaning forward in her chair with a welcoming smile. She appears calm for someone haunted by ghosts.
Her eyes flit from face to face and her smile gives way to a tiny laugh. Today is July 1, 2001. Nine of us, four men and five women, sit in a circle of chairs on the back porch of a white clapboard house near Bristol, Rhode Island. The house is surrounded by trees and bushes so thick I can't tell how close the nearest neighbors live. I feel detached from the rest of the world. The only sounds intruding upon the silence are those we make, and those of the birds. I can smell the ocean from here.
These people are my distant cousins. I met most of them for the first time earlier this morning at church and have met Katrina once before. She looks cool in her short hair and sleeveless blouse despite the summer heat. A trickle of sweat slithers down inside my long-sleeved shirt, tickling my right side. I discreetly brush my bicep against my ribcage to stem the current and then wipe droplets from my forehead with my fingers.
Katrina's calm vanishes as she begins to speak about why we are here: how she learned from her grandmother about her slave-trading ancestors, and decided to make a documentary film that will expose the horror of our family's past. I don't know if it's the subject matter, the camera, speaking in front of us, or simply the culmination of more than three years of work and anticipation on her part, but Katrina now appears fragile and troubled. She speaks in a hushed voice for many minutes, pausing, stopping, looking down at her fidgeting hands, then up at some of us.
Finally,she sits in silence. A voice interrupts from the side. "Can you do it again?" Jude Ray, the film's co-director, says she needs to be more concise and make her voice stronger.
Liz Dory, the director of photography, shoulders the professional-grade video camera focused in close-up on Katrina's face. Jeff Livesey, the sound man, holds the boom microphone above her head. We have Liz to thank for our seating in direct sunlight. A large umbrella was removed because the shadows fouled up her shots. It's supposed to get up to about ninety today, but it feels much hotter. Jude, Liz, and Jeff stand with the confident air of people who've been on many film sets.
"Umm, I..." Tears well up in Katrina's eyes. The corners of her mouth begin to turn up in a smile, but drop as she looks down again. The glowing red light on the camera indicates that Liz continues to record.
One of the men in the group rises, spreads his arms, and smiles. "How about a group hug?" This is Dain Perry. Dressed in khaki shorts, a light shirt, and broad-brimmed straw hat to shade his head, he appears to be in his mid-fifties. I exhale the breath I've been hold-ing, glad that Dain has broken the tension. Dark patches of sweat dot his shirt as well. We all stand and embrace, resting our arms around each others' shoulders or waists for several silent moments. Though Dain's gesture seems intended to support Katrina, this feels like the first time we've all actually connected.
When we sit back down, the tears fall from Katrina's eyes. She explains that when she was in her late twenties she read a booklet about her family history written by her grandmother. She hesitates and looks down again. "It's hard and scary to know that one is connected to evil people. There was so much family pride."
Now she felt far from proud. She could not say out loud to anyone that she was descended from slave traders. "And, um..." She looks again from face to face. She wipes her tears, takes a deep breath, and smiles. Her voice becomes stronger.
She explains that the intense part was not just the shock of discovering her slave-trading ancestry, but the realization that on some level she knew already but had buried it. "I prided myself on being self-aware and self-reflective in thinking about issues of race and society and yet I had managed to completely repress the fact that I was descended from slave traders."
Her voice becomes more animated as she explains that in read-ing the booklet, "I just knew instantly that I already knew. But I have no idea when I first found out, how I found out, who told me, how I reacted, and yet this is a pretty big deal. So I started asking questions about our family and about this buried history of New England." She explains that she started out on a solo journey but realized it needed to be a family process. She is honored that we've chosen to join her.
"A lot of people who aren't here are totally supportive," says Elly, another cousin who flew from the west coast to be here. Elly works for the Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle, moni-toring Superfund Sites. Like me, she's never met any of these peo-ple before. Her long, dark hair is held back in a ponytail.
Elly's right. Many family members Katrina contacted, as well as friends and colleagues, of hers and ours, applaud her efforts. There are also people who oppose the project. Some live in Bristol, and in-deed, some are family members.
The oldest of the women present--about sixty, not quite twice Katrina's age--introduces herself with careful and deliberate words.
I sense a burden even heavier than the one Katrina bears. With no hint of a smile, she looks off into the distance and then down at the deck as she begins to speak. "Well, my name today is Keila DePoorter. I say 'today' because when I was young I was christened Edith Howe Fulton. I'm Holly's oldest sister." She smiles at the woman sitting next to her. "She's the youngest in the family and I'm the oldest. Changing my name, which I did back in 1975, was part of my effort to move away from family. I was named after my grandmother Edith Howe, and I adored her. But carrying that name felt like this heavy thing for me when I was young. It had a lot of nonverbal expectation."
Like Katrina, Keila continues to shift her gaze back and forth from the patio deck to us as she speaks. "I grew up here in Bristol. My grandparents had a dairy farm across the street from where we lived and I don't ever remember not just being in love with animals. I lived from one summer to the next. We lived in Providence in the wintertime, which I suffered through to go back to Bristol, to go back to the farm. That's where my heart was, on the land, with the animals.
"When I was ten years old I would get up at four-thirty in the morning to help with morning milking. I loved working with the farmers. They felt so real to me. They weren't playing this strange game that my family played that I just could not identify with." Elizabeth, the youngest of the women, nods and smiles."There were times when I used to think,'I wish I was an animal, I don't like being a human being. I don't like seeing what grown-ups do.'"
I sit to Keila's right with crossed legs, my hands folded in my lap.
"My life has felt like a struggle because I love my family so much." She says she's always felt "pushed-pulled," a phrase I've never heard before but know exactly what she means. Looking down, Keila tilts her head and a smile begins to form as she tells us that one of the unwritten rules in her family was something called the No Talk Rule.
Holly lifts her hands from her knees and with an exaggerated expression mouths the words, "It's big..."
Keila chuckles and nods her head in agreement with her sister. "It's very big. You don't talk about unpleasant things. There's a line in one of our family books that one of our ancestors said, that we should never talk about sex. What were the others?" She looks to Holly.
"Religion."
"Religion," Keila repeats.
"I think politics," says Holly.
"Right," says Keila. "And the last one was 'and the Negroes.'"
I look from face to face as people nod and chuckle uncomfortably. What am I doing here? Though I am distantly related, I'm the only one here who isn't descended from slave traders, not directly anyway. I feel another trickle of sweat, on my left side this time.
This place is foreign to me. I live in Bend, Oregon, about as far from Bristol as you can get, and not just geographically. How have I ended up with this group of virtual strangers, speaking about such un-pleasant things?
Twenty years ago, David Howe, a friend of mine, told me he sus-pected we might be related because his father's middle name is DeWolf. He was right. My wife, Lindi, and I first met David's father in 1986. Halsey DeWolf Howe and his wife, Carol, invited us to spend the night with them on our way through Massachusetts on our honeymoon. After dinner, Halsey explained my connection to David.
"Your father and David are sixth cousins, as you can see here." He pointed to a name at the top of the genealogy chart he'd created to delineate my relationship to David. "Charles DeWolf is the com-mon ancestor. He was born in 1695 and probably died in Guadeloupe in the West Indies. Our line descends from one of his sons, Mark Antony DeWolf. You descend from his older brother, Simon."
Halsey grew up in Bristol, as have generations of Mark Antony DeWolf's descendants. They used to gather at one of the old DeWolf mansions, Linden Place, for a family reunion each year to watch the Fourth of July parade. Halsey regaled me all evening with stories of a time and place long past, filled with eccentric characters. He began with James DeWolf, the man most responsible for the family's fame and fortune.
"Captain Jim was a true scoundrel in every sense of the word. He was a slave trader, rum runner, and privateer." Visions of the Disneyland ride Pirates of the Caribbean entered my mind. James DeWolf became a United States senator and amassed a fortune from his adventurous exploits.
Linden Place was built by James's nephew George DeWolf. George's daughter,Theodora,married Christopher Colt,the brother of Samuel Colt, who invented the revolver. There were once several mansions in Bristol owned by the family, but only Linden Place re-mains standing today.
Mark Antony's grandson "Nor'west" John DeWolf sailed from Bristol around South America and north along the coast of the Oregon Territory in 1805 to Vancouver Island and Alaska on a fur-trading mission. He sold his ship and traversed the fifty-five hundred miles overland across Siberia from east to west. He then sailed back home to Bristol.1 He wed Mary Melville and became uncle to young Herman, whose imagination was stirred by the seafaring tales of his uncle "Nor'west" John. Melville had his own adventures at sea before eventually writing Moby Dick, where "Captain D'Wolf" appears in chapter 45. (D'Wolf was an alternate spelling of DeWolf.)
William DeWolf Hopper, who played Paul Drake on the Perry Mason television series, boasted ties to Bristol through his father and grandmother. (William's mother was the notorious gossip col-umnist Hedda Hopper.) Theodora and Christopher Colt's grandson furnished the other notable theatrical connection when he married the famous actress Ethel Barrymore, who once lived at Linden Place.
Listening to Halsey, I felt like a child sitting enthralled at the feet of a master storyteller.Throughout that night, and for months after, I focused not on the more unsavory acts of my newly discovered rel-atives, but on the fact that I was related to Hoppers, Colts, Barrymores, and Melvilles.I became obsessed with genealogy and making connections with distant cousins, dead or alive, famous or not.
In December 2000, David received a letter from Katrina, who is the daughter of his cousin Libby, and shared it with me.
Dear kith and kin,
I'm writing with information and invitations related to the documentary film project I have embarked upon about our mutual DeWolf ancestors and the slave trade.Two and a half years ago I decided to produce a documentary about the DeWolfs, the role of New England in slavery, and the legacy of all this in the present. For all the progress that has been made in race relations and racial equality, the disparity in social opportunity and life prospects is still huge and the lack of trust still profound between blacks and whites.
So I want to begin with our family and try to better understand the whole can of worms: privilege, shelteredness, productive feelings of guilt, unproductive feelings of guilt, fear, etc.
I would like to invite fellow descendants to do the journey with me--literally, as well as existentially. I will be organizing a 3-part journey: 1) a gathering in Rhode Island; 2) then a trip to Cuba and West Africa; which 3) will culminate back in Rhode Island again.
I invite you to think about the possibility of participating in these gatherings and voyages.
I had never heard of Katrina Browne and didn't know how we were related, but was amazed by her letter. At David's suggestion, I called Katrina. In February 2001, Lindi and I drove from Bend to her apartment in Berkeley, where she had attended seminary, to discuss her project. Though she hadn't sent me the letter, she asked me to participate in the journey because she thought I could bring a unique perspective: that of a family member whose direct ancestors were not slave traders.
Once I agreed to go, doubts began to surface. Katrina sought to confront the legacy of slavery and its impact on relations between black and white Americans today. The fact was that my interaction with black people was limited. I grew up in Pomona, California, which had a sizable African American population, but the last time I interacted regularly with black people was in the late 1960s at Palomares Junior High School.Though we shared classes, acted together in school plays, went to dances, and played sports together, my most powerful memories were of fear. This was shortly after the Watts Riots in Los Angeles and race relations were tense. I was never attacked by any black classmates, though I was threatened several times. I always backed down, quite willing to appear weak if it helped me avoid a bloody nose.
There were plenty of fights between blacks and whites at school, both during school hours and after school, and at the park up the street. I remember the afternoon when everyone knew Larry and Greg were going to fight. Their battle had been brewing for weeks. Larry was surrounded by black kids urging him on just like Greg was encouraged by white kids. A huge crowd gathered outside by the lockers after school.
Greg and Larry came from opposite directions. Greg barely removed his jacket before Larry punched him hard in the face and knocked him over a bench. Greg sprung up to fight back but was no match for the quicker black boy. The fight lasted mere moments before police intervened. It was as if they had been watching from behind the lockers, as if they knew in advance. Larry soon sat handcuffed in the back of a police car. He stared straight ahead, his jaw rigid, head held high.
As the crowd dispersed, I watched Greg walk away with his friends, a rag held to his bloody face. I couldn't understand why the police only arrested Larry. I didn't ask.
By 1969, Martin Luther King's call for nonviolent protest and reconciliation between the races was a distant memory as far as I was concerned. I recall police in full riot gear patrolling the halls of my school almost every day. My parents worried for our safety, so my father began picking up my sister and me after school. Ninth grade became my last in public schools. I had tried to make friends with black classmates, but three years at Palomares taught me that for the most part, two separate planets circled within the larger school solar system: blacks hung out with other blacks and whites with whites.
My parents enrolled us at Western Christian High School, a private parochial school, where there were no black students, and we moved several miles from Pomona to Glendora, where there were fewer black people. Racial tension, and its accompanying fear, disappeared from my life like spilled water on the hot California sidewalk.
In spite of a few unpleasant incidents, I recall my childhood with great fondness. I watched Leave It to Beaver on television, and lived a sheltered Leave It to Beaver life. I spent long summer days at the beach, played games with my friends, and cheered for the Dodgers. We attended First Christian Church in Pomona every Sunday. My parents were married there in 1951 and still attend today. My clos-est friends in junior high and high school were kids at First Christian, many of whom were also fellow members of Boy Scout Troop 102, which was sponsored by our church.
Two of those friends, Mitchell and Michael, were twins and bi-racial. Their mother was Italian and their father was black. Race didn't seem to enter the equation with them. Though their skin was darker than mine, we were simply friends. I never understood why many of my black classmates at school were so angry, not to men-tion the black people I saw on the news. I remember wondering why race relations couldn't be easy, like I assumed my relationships with Mitch and Mike were. As I think about it now, I realize I was too young and naive, and perhaps self-absorbed, to ever ask Mitch and Mike how they felt about it.
In September 1972, I moved a thousand miles north from my parents' home to the dorms at Northwest Christian College in Eu-gene, Oregon. I saw very few black students on my college campus, and the majority weren't African American--they were African. Battles at NCC were over interpretation of Bible verses, not race re-lations. I got married in 1974 and my wife gave birth to our two daughters.
I spent six years--instead of the normal four--in undergraduate studies at both NCC and the University of Oregon, which stand adjacent to each other. After graduating from both in 1978, I moved to Bend, in Central Oregon, where I owned and managed a movie theater and restaurant and where I met David Howe. I divorced and remarried. I was elected to the city council in 1992, and to the county commission--as a Republican--in 1998, the job I would hold until 2005. I saw few black people anywhere in Oregon. I thought less and less about the tension I once felt between blacks and whites. It was no longer part of my world.
I was excited to join Katrina to further investigate my family ancestry and to travel to Africa and Cuba. I looked forward to be-coming more global in my thinking and awareness, but I was simultaneously anxious. This was going to be an expensive journey where I'd confront issues that I recognized more and more I'd rather not deal with. My anxiety was prescient. My exposure to issues of race would change dramatically in 2001--and in unimagined ways for which my life hadn't prepared me.
Next: Chapter 4 -- The Great Folks »
Excerpted with permission from Inheriting the Trade by Thomas Norman DeWolf. Beacon Press, Boston, © 2008.
The Great Folks
Chapter 4: The Great Folks
Early Monday morning, on my second full day in Bristol, I begin reading an article Katrina gave each of us entitled "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh.1 She writes, "I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant' to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks."
McIntosh's interest in the subject began with her frustration with men who were unwilling to admit their privilege in comparison with women. She then recognized that she benefited from overprivilege based on her race. She listed several privileges she experiences in her daily life solely because she is white. I see many that apply to me. "I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time." That's easy to do in Bend. "I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me." Again, this pertains to me. I keep reading.
"I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed." True.
"I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection." Again, yes.
"I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race." I've heard that one before. I think Archie Bunker used to say it on All in the Family on TV.
"I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group." That's interesting. No white person is ever asked to speak for all white people. But as I reflect about it, I can remember thinking that if a black person said something, I figured all black people probably felt pretty much the same way.
McIntosh lists dozens of different ways she was privileged because of her white skin. Intellectually, I understand most of them. I'm surprised by several and realize I've had the privilege of not needing to reflect on them before. I've never been followed around in a store because the owner thinks I might steal something or ever even contemplated the fact that most of the people I see on television or in newspapers look like me. I never realized that when history teachers presented our national heritage, they always talked about the white people who were involved in its creation. I never thought about black people not being able to find a hairdresser who could cut their hair. I fidget while I read because I begin to see how my white skin has given me privilege that I've had the luxury of taking for granted.
McIntosh hits home when she writes about the importance of relinquishing the myth of meritocracy. "If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own." She describes unearned advantages males receive due to their gender, and essentially calls for a redesign of our social structure. Of course, the people in position to effect such change are the people in power: primarily white men, and the question of whether, or why, this demographic group would choose to change is a pro-found one.
----
Beginning in the early 1800s, one tactic white northerners used to help distance themselves from the slavery experience was to vilify black people. Joanne explains how white people made fun of the Africans' speech, looks, dress, and activities. Consciously or unconsciously, the result was to create and expand separation. Whites hoped to get blacks to move back to Africa, a place most of them had never lived and knew nothing about.
She passes around an old cartoon as an example of the kind of literature that began to appear in newspapers and magazines."Here's a black woman in an exaggerated hat because she's living above her station. She's got two black men with their arms around her because, of course, she's lascivious and unchaste. There's a black man you can't see very well who's drunk on the floor. And look at the language: '12th annebersary ob Affricum bobalition,' because, of course, that's the way black people speak."
The story of an enslaved South and a free North is willful and constructed amnesia: whites, who, a few generations removed, had no recollection or knowledge of northern slavery, reasoned that blacks were disproportionately poor and illiterate due to an innate inferiority. Separation between the races increased, and whites felt superior. This explains much about northern racism.
Joanne asks Elizabeth if she knew she was descended from a major slave trader.
"I didn't know it was major," she answers. "I knew it was a slave trader."
"Was it an open discussion in your family?" Joanne asks.
"No, not at all," says Elizabeth.
James says that's been his experience as well. Family and the past were very important, but his family was very selective about what they focused on. Elly says that, to be fair, what she heard from her mother would have been what her mother experienced in life. She didn't know any slave traders. Who knows much of anything about family members more than one or two generations back?
"If you forget that history," says Katrina, "then when current events are about racial injustice, you're not implicated. You can point the finger elsewhere. It explains a whole northern, white, liberal thing. We know we're not supposed to be prejudiced and we're supposed to consider everyone to be equal. But that's the end of the story and you put it out of your mind because you're a good person. Your region and your family have always been good. If there's a problem it must be somebody else's problem."
"Does it strike you that there's an unusual absence in your lives of engagement with people who are not like you?" asks Joanne.
"Not at all...," says Dain with a laugh. I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or serious.
Joanne explains one argument that has been made since the Civil War: northern racism is evidenced by an engagement with issues of social justice on the one hand, but an almost deliberate disengagement with actual black people on the other. They support civil rights but haven't ever had a meaningful conversation with a black person.
"Yet," says Dain. "I don't know the numbers on this, but my impression is that a huge number of people from New England went down to civil rights marches in the South."
"Bull's-eye!" says Joanne. "Oh yes, because they're going to straighten out the South! We marched south in the Civil War. During Reconstruction we sent schoolteachers south to improve the literacy rate among black people. Aren't you proving my point? White northerners have been terribly concerned about social justice and black empowerment somewhere else, not here. God forbid you empower them next door. Empower them in Alabama."
I choose this moment to toss in a thought as the California boy. I don't think New England is the Lone Ranger here. I struggle to explain that I did not know how to talk to black people about my fear when I was young. There was no basis or education for that kind of dialogue. I also didn't know about any of the family history, let alone about slavery in the North. There's no amnesia, there's no guilt--for me, it didn't exist. Katrina asks what I would think if I were my ancestor Simon. Even though I'm not guilty, how I would deal with the fact that my brother was a slave trader?
I pause for a moment. "It was almost two hundred years ago. It was a different time, it was a different culture. I don't want to defend anything that happened in this family or in New England or in America but I don't want to vilify these people either because I don't know. I wasn't walking in their shoes."
Although I'm not aware of it at the moment, in Ghana I will have an epiphany that will profoundly alter my beliefs.
Over the past week, Katrina met individually with each of us in order to capture some personal background along with our hopes and fears regarding this journey. Ledlie said, "My fears about going to Ghana are that it won't mean a lot to me. I will see where the slaves were imprisoned and it won't come alive for me. My other fear is that it will come alive for me."
His words haunt me.
Next: Chapter 9 -- "I have to do it everyday" »
Excerpted with permission from Inheriting the Trade by Thomas Norman DeWolf. Beacon Press, Boston, © 2008.
"I have to do it every day"
Chapter 9: "I have to do it every day"
This afternoon we'll participate in what Katrina calls "a community dialogue." She informed us earlier this week that as we meet peo-ple, any people, we should invite them to join us today. There were no qualifications other than an interest in talking about the legacy of slavery. Several Ghanaians, as well as African Americans, have been invited. We are reminded to speak slowly. Here in Ghana, we have the accent.
During our drive from the hotel, Katrina and Juanita try to focus our expectations. We don't all agree. Some want to apologize for our ancestors' role in the slave trade. Dain thinks it would be in-appropriate. He and Ledlie spoke with a Ghanaian priest yesterday who reminded them that Africans were full partners in the slave trade, so shouldn't they apologize as well? James agrees with Dain about the apology, but he does think it is important to say how terribly sad we feel.
Abiko Eghagha, a young woman of twenty-four and one of our production assistants, sits next to me on the bus. So far she's been mostly silent around me. Today she says, "Sometimes I think the African Americans who come here leave with hate. That is not helpful. It would be better if people would use their energy to make the world better."
Our bus driver, Sam, pulls through an open iron gate and parks on the hard dirt in front of a large building. The walls are dingy white like the walls at Elmina Castle.This appears to have once been a school, probably built during colonial times. A hand-painted sign reads, "Darosem Restaurant; Cape Coast Town Hall; Catering for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Parties, Birthdays, Weddings, Etc." Wide steps, flanked by two twenty-foot-tall trees as high as the front of the building, lead to the front doors.
DeWolf descendants meeting with Ghanaians, African-Americans, and others at the Town Hall, Cape Coast, Ghana. Courtesy of Katrina Browne
We enter a large auditorium with a stage at the far end. In places, its curtains have separated from the track above. Dozens of white plastic patio chairs are gathered in the middle of the open wooden floor. Far above, several ceiling tiles are missing. Others are cracked or discolored by leaking water.
Wide slatted doors to the outside are set into the sides of the auditorium. They remain open so air will circulate on this, another hot, humid African day. I walk outside and watch three small boys jostle and play together.
When I go back inside, Ledlie sits in the middle of a small circle of chairs that are filled with young girls in peach-and-brown uniforms from nearby St. Monica's School. They look to be twelve or thirteen years old. I stand a short distance away and listen as he speaks with them about slavery, rape, malnutrition, and the Middle Passage. One girl asks if Ledlie's ancestors bought her ancestors for a lot of money.
"No," he says.
"They lied to us," she says. "The white people said they are com-ing to make friends with us and trade with us. Instead they came and made us slaves."
"Are you not ashamed of coming here?" another girl asks. The other girls giggle. They look surprised by their classmate's boldness.
"Yeah, I am ashamed. It is a shaming thing."
As more of our guests arrive, Ledlie's intimate conversation breaks up. We soon sit among the students from St. Monica's and more than two dozen adults of various ages from Ghana and the United States. We begin by introducing ourselves to each other.
Then Kofi stands. "Good evening to you all. My name is Kofi Peprah and I'm the co-facilitator for this program. We are all gathered here this evening to create history. We have a family from the United States whose ancestors were directly involved in the slave trade and it has created a lot of tension in their heads."
Katrina explains the background of the project and Juanita then asks for a moment of silence to honor the ancestors who were taken from this continent, to honor the people who were taken on ships and did not survive the Middle Passage, to honor the people who made it alive to the New World. Their legacy is why we're here. "When we talk about slavery and spiritual decimation, we often talk about black folks. But something has happened to white folks in this whole process. This family is trying to figure out what that is and they want your help and your wisdom. You don't have to be nice. The last thing this family wants is for people to say things in a way that's overly polite and is not getting at the real stuff."
Abiko says, "If you are trying to ease racial tensions, why are you having this conversation in Ghana when the problem is really in America?"
An African American woman, Dr. Jessie Ruth Gaston, professor of African history at California State University, Sacramento, wears a bright fuchsia-colored wrap around her head and a light blue blouse. "Why Ghana? I say, why not Ghana? The participants in the slave trade are diverse. It's not just an issue with the U.S.; it's an African issue as well. Not all Africans participated. But some of the rulers did benefit from the trade. When I teach African history, it's a hard area to discuss. It's complex. Many times, when students learn Africa participated, they just throw the responsibility off."
She talks about the treatment African Americans continue to be subjected to: one group of people has been taught that they are "less than" while another has been taught they are "greater than." Everywhere in the world where there are black and white people, or lighter-skinned blacks and darker-skinned blacks, the images remain. The negative images connected to people of African descent impact them when they seek employment. The assumption is that they aren't qualified. People question whether she earned her job or if it was handed to her through affirmative action. People of color can have college degrees, she says, but "When people see me, they see black."
"That gets at the crux of the issue," says Juanita. "There are things that white folks don't understand that intensely affect present-day living for black people. How has this whole legacy impacted white people? What has it done to the ways in which they set up their families, their communities, the ways they move through the world, and the ways in which they deal with nonwhite people?"
We listen to example after example of incidents in which people of African descent are regularly suspected, followed, or looked down upon. We hear how young African American girls play with white dolls and how young black women want to straighten their hair to look whiter.
"When I was in college I read Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye,"says Katrina. "I had blonder hair than I do now and I cut my hair as short as I could because I was so upset that I had the kind of hair and blue eyes that were making young black girls aspire to look like me. It was such a quintessential white guilt thing. Until I started dealing directly with my family history, and working through my feelings, the guilt was all-consuming. When you hate yourself, you're not an effective ally in solving problems."
She says that one legacy of slavery for white people is that we don't notice racial inequality because it's too painful."When you do notice, it's so upsetting that all you can do is hate yourself. A lot of people get stuck in one of those two places. What I'm trying to fig-ure out is if there's some other place where I can absorb the horror, yet be in a better relationship with myself and others in solving the problems."
Kofi walks farther down this path."Do you think the slave trade made the whites feel superior? Do you whites feel superior while you are sitting with us?"
"Whites of European descent have felt superior from the very beginning," says Dain, who sits next to Kofi. "In every new country we went to, people of a different color we considered barbarians and savages."
Kofi leans forward, looks directly at Dain, and digs in. "Do you still personally feel superior as a white person?"
"That's a wonderful question for me," says Dain as he taps his own chest and smiles. "I can say uncategorically no, I do not. I feel that everyone in this room is my peer at least, and some of you are probably my superior in many ways." He tells about growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, a terribly racist community, in the forties and fifties.
"I was terribly racist. I remember walking behind black people and yelling out the word 'chocolate.' I remember throwing pecans at the flower ladies across the street from us, all of whom were black, simply to harass them. That embarrasses me very, very deeply. Was it the environment that I was in? Absolutely. Was it more than that? I don't know, and that thought scares me. I may be afraid to dig for that answer.
"I feel very proud, frankly, that I have been able to overcome as much of that as I have. But it's taken a great deal of looking inside, and it's taken an enormous amount of risk to reach out and put my arms around those black people who I know. It has at times been very scary, because we've been taught to be scared of black people."
"So Dain," says Juanita, her head tilted slightly. "I'm curious. Do you really, really think that you've shed every single bit of the racial categorization and the racism? Do you really think it's possi-ble that's where you are? Because I know a lot of black folks who would think that wasn't true." It's obvious that Juanita doesn't think it's true.
"And I would think that wasn't true also." He laughs. All of a sudden he's in the hot seat and his bald head turns red."I'm not sure I said it was completely gone."
"You said overcome, and so to me..."
"Largely overcome," he interrupts. "Let me narrow that down." I feel a little sorry for Dain as he grapples for his next words. "My deep concern is that racism is a part of the human condition. Peo-ple want to feel superior to other people. I don't think it can all ever be shed. What I can do is move how I interact with people beyond where I used to be, and embrace them. That is the best I can do."
Juanita calls on a Jamaican woman, Dr. Kaylene Richards-Ekeh, a professor of criminal justice who, like Jessie Gaston, teaches at California State University, Sacramento. She wants to address how the legacy of slavery impacts criminal law in the United States. She explains the disproportionate percentages of incarceration of people of color--that when black people violate the law, they're treated differently than Caucasians who commit the same crime. For the same offense, black people are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be prosecuted, more likely to be convicted and sentenced to longer terms in prison."That is one of the legacies of slavery.When people violate the law I'm not saying they should not be prosecuted, but black people are less likely to be able to obtain a good lawyer, and justice in the United States depends on the lawyer you can afford."
She discusses images in our society that perpetuate certain myths, such as that black people are criminals and drug addicts.And even though most people on welfare in the United States are white women and their children, the prevalent notion is that it is black people on welfare.
Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi teaches video production at Berkeley High School. He came to Ghana for the first time to study and to trace his roots. Eli tells about his Puerto Rican and Jewish heritage. He's traveled to Israel, Puerto Rico -- where his African ancestors are from-- and elsewhere in the Caribbean. He says, "If you look at the whole world today, you have to ask yourself why blacks and Africans are at the bottom everywhere. In Africa, in the Caribbean, in South America and North America, the darker skin you have, the lower you are in society. That's the effect of slavery.
"For the family that came here today, and for we of privilege in the United States, whether white folks or folks of color, do you really want equality and justice? We're here today on top. If we weren't on top, we wouldn't be able to be in Ghana. Are you really willing to give up what you have to be equal? I figure the answer is no." His voice becomes more animated. "You can talk about Nelson Mandela, and what he did was great. But the situation in South Africa is the same.The same people have the money. It's easy to play around with, but when we're talking about action and being real with ourselves, where are we willing to go with this?"
Ledlie sits across the room from Eli. "I'm a retired priest of the Episcopal church. My brother here asks the right question, and it's very disturbing. I think of the parable of the young wealthy man who went to Jesus and asked what he could do and Jesus said, 'You can give up your wealth.' And he turned away sorrowful." Ledlie says he's scared of that image; that he would be that man.
"When I began this journey," says Elly," I thought I needed to return transformed into a disciple of a new vision or that I would need to be done. And I'm not going to be done. This conversation has to happen every day, every hour, with whites among whites, with blacks among blacks, between blacks and whites--every combination. We need to keep talking."
"I've been a primary teacher for thirty years." I turn my at-tention to an African American woman with a powerful voice and presence. Josephine Watts sits next to Jessie Gaston and sounds like someone who could keep the attention of a primary school classroom. She works with teachers who teach English as a second language. She says, "You asked what you can do. Take a closer look and try not to deny that racism exists, that injustice exists. You can do something about it. Minorities cry about it, and nothing is done. But if the dominant culture accepts it, then something can be done."
Josephine says that at schools we need to ask the educators to accept blacks and whites on an equal level. Many black children have felt the stigma of a white teacher believing they cannot learn, that they have nothing to offer."I sat in a class observing a white teacher. She only had two black kids in her class, and she was asking questions. A little black boy had his hands all up." She waves her arm like a young child. "She kept telling him to sit down. This is in Sacramento. These things are happening to our black children.They grow up to be adults and here we are."
"Can you help me?" I ask Josephine. She nods and smiles. "If I as a white person stand up and talk, whether I talk about Dr. Martin Luther King or about Nelson Mandela, I have the impression that people think I'm just trying to be politically correct. I don't know how not to sound that way. Are there words or images that I could bring to this dialogue so black people don't think I'm full of crap; so that black people can see that I'm trying to be a sincere person who wants to do better?"
Josephine's eyes bore into mine from fifteen feet away. She says February is the only time we talk about black people. Throughout school curriculums the focus is on European culture, and subjects like Shakespeare, with which black students have little or no connection. When teaching math, why not include the contributions the Egyptians made? When education is broadened to include contributions by Africans and African Americans, blacks can start feeling good about themselves and then they'll know we're sincere.
"But if you just dwell on one thing, well, everybody knows about Martin Luther King."
I respond that I don't work in a school, and ask how to apply it in daily life.
"Daily life, okay. I was a teacher; only black teacher in my school. It took years for the white teachers to even invite me to any func-tions they had. Then, if we were going to a movie, they didn't ask me if I was interested in the movie we were attending, and it was the most boring movie I ever went to." Her comment elicits laughter. "Reach out to any minority person you're working with and invite them into your home, into your circle. That's a step. And once you invite them, don't think it's a token. Ask what they want to do this weekend. Just sit in our shoes. Make it a point to go to a black play or a black concert, so you can see how it feels. That's a step."
"See,that's hard."I'm not sure why I said these words.They just came out. I look at Josephine and shake my head.
"That is hard." Josephine leans forward as she slings her words at me. Most of the group laughs and claps, but I don't look at them. I focus on Josephine, who also doesn't laugh. "Hey, I have to do it every day. I'm almost the only black teacher in my district. When I go to a conference, I'm the only black person sitting in that conference. Is it easy? No. But I have to do it. You have to do it. You have to do it in order to feel what I'm feeling."
"Thank you," I say. I continue to stare at her for several moments.
Dr. Gaston says, "What the family has hooked onto is the truth. Once a group of people get hold of the truth, they don't just sit still on it. In African history or black studies, everybody used to say, 'What is there to teach anyway?' I have one African history class, to cover from ancient times to present. Now, what can you do with that? How can you teach the history of a continent four times the size of the United States all in one term?
"Once the truth starts coming out it will cause this kind of con-fusion amongst members of the dominant society, which sets off a chain. So I think it's a good beginning. And what Eli was saying too, 'But what now?' " She asks if we're willing to talk about reparations and other types of programs. Becoming conscious of racial injustice and the legacy of slavery is only the beginning. "What then?" she asks.
That is the key question, I think to myself. What next? The truth is confusing. Actually, that's not accurate --it isn't the truth that's confusing. It's what to do with the truth that upsets the ordered world I've been raised in and taught to believe in. That's confusing, and very challenging.
"I want to comment on walking in people's shoes," says Eli. "I never believed that would work. You'll never get the experience the other person has." He looks toward Josephine, "You said, 'I have to do it every day.' They don't have to do it every day. So they'll never understand what you're talking about -- ever. So don't even think that you can. It's not comparable. The direction you're going is great, but if you're not going to devote your life to it, they'll never take you seriously. You can talk about Martin Luther King, or whatever, but they'll know after you leave the podium you're not real because you haven't devoted your life to it. It's not something you can turn on and off. It has to be a path, a walk of life."
Eli's comments ring true. It is my privilege that allows me to be here. Before this journey I never considered my own privilege. Of course I've known I'm better off than many people, but it has always been generic. It was "we Americans" or we "middle class" who had it better than "those poor people" over there. It was never me.
Listening today, I realize even more that I've been trained, invisibly and unconsciously, not to see my own privilege as a man or as a white person. I look down at the little notebook in which I write. Even this twenty-five-cent pad of paper is evidence of my privilege.
I have every confidence that all these notes I'm taking, and cassette tapes I'm recording, will one day become a published book.
I look around the auditorium and marvel at this moment here in Cape Coast, Ghana. I'm part of an amazing conversation with several Ghanaian people, but mostly with African Americans. Why don't we talk together like this at home? Why did it take all of us coming to Africa? How can we whites understand what African American people experience, and how can they understand us, if we don't talk with each other?
Excerpted with permission from Inheriting the Trade by Thomas Norman DeWolf. Beacon Press, Boston, © 2008.